Spanish Over Fishing

Back in July 2008, I wrote a blog about the bureaucracy involved in acquiring a sea-fishing license in Spain. In that case, I did eventually obtain the license with local help from Hazel & Roger.

It was not entirely clear that this was worthwhile as Harry & I only succeeded in catching a couple of fish in several attempts.

This time, Roger had located an inland fishing lake (stocked and maintained specifically for fishing) and a license was not required, according to his lead.

Harry & I made our way there early one morning and the place certainly looked the part.

The license situation was not so clear, however. The owner had information prepared on the subject to help make it "clear".

Apparently, the region of Andalucia has lumped together fishing with hunting and come up with a fantastically complex system.

The usual method is to take a course and exam which takes 40 days. Applications for the course must be made at specific times of the year, and the exam can be taken only on particular days. Both the course, the exam and then the license require payment of fees and filling of forms.

Luckily, there is a "simpler" method in case you have a UK license (which obviously we do).

All you have to do is ...

i) Take your UK license and UK passport, in person, to the British Consulate and pay €41 for them to fill in a form to acknowledge that you have a UK license.

ii) Take this to another agency to obtain an identification number

iii) Obtain fishing insurance (!?)

iv) Take all this to another place and pay some more fees, fill in some more forms etc and they will issue a license.

Probably.

The good news is that now we know that the Spanish seem to be really intent on making tourist fishing impossible, it will save on packing and transporting the fishing equipment - we will simply not bother !